Ryan: Obama didn't close the plant

Rep. Paul Ryan said Tuesday that he wasn’t suggesting that President Barack Obama was responsible for the closure of an auto plant in Janesville, Wis., during his convention speech last week.

“What they are trying to suggest is that I said Barack Obama was responsible for the plant shutdown in Janesville. That is not what I was saying; read the speech. What I was saying is the president ought to be held to account for his broken promises. After the plant was shut down, he said he would lead efforts to restore the plant. It’s still idle,” said Ryan on NBC’s “Today.”

“My point was not to lay blame on a plant shutdown, but this is yet another example of the president’s broken promises,” added the GOP vice presidential candidate. “In 2008, he traveled all around the country making promises he would break, just like in Janesville.”

Ryan, who is from Janesville, said the president had promised to “retool the plant.”

“The promise was he was going to open the plant,” said Ryan. “The promise was he was going to lead an effort to retool the plant so that people could go back to work and it would be open for 100 years.”

The Wisconsin Republican stirred controversy last week over lines in his convention speech that appeared to criticize Obama for not keeping a Janesville auto plant running — whether Obama is to blame and the extent to which he could or should have affected the plant’s status remain a matter of debate.

“Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: ‘I believe that if our government is there to support you, this plant will be here for another hundred years,’ That’s what he said in 2008,” Ryan said at the Republican National Convention last week. “Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day.”

And through appearances on the morning show, Ryan would continue to point out the limits of the auto bailouts. Asked on ABC to respond to Vice President Joe Biden’s line that Osama bin Laden is dead and GM is alive, Ryan responded, “General Motors isn’t alive in my hometown.”